Alex Gervais ’28
Executive Opinion & Design Editor
On June 18th, Trinity alum Tucker Carlson ’91 sat down with Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas to discuss the war between Israel and Iran. Carlson interviewed Cruz for nearly two hours. The conversation’s most viral moment—amassing 40 million views on X—came when Cruz was unable to answer the simple question of how many people live in Iran (92 million). Carlson interrogated Cruz on the US backing of Israel and the bubbling Israeli-Iranian War that, while in a ceasefire at the time of this article being published, has the potential to yet again embroil the Middle East in conflict.
Carlson has been written about extensively in this paper by myself, writers before me and I’m sure he will be by writers after. He is Trinity’s most visible alumnus and, with his brand of dogmatic conservatism, often an easy target for our left-leaning staff to rightfully pick on. Typically, a Carlson interview rarely catches my eye; I assume I’ll be hearing the same right wing, holier-than-thou, echo chamber rhetoric that has been emblematic of his brand since his early days of bowtie-adorned “Crossfire” debates. Over his career however, Carlson has departed from his expected hawkish Reaganite median and has adopted a tacit belief in non-interventionism in foreign policy. It’s one that cuts both ways, not concerned with human rights or US interests, but instead doing absolutely nothing. There are glimpses of humanity when he calls out Israel’s murder of innocent Palestinian civilians, but is then countered by his steadfast support of the Putin regime’s unjust war in Ukraine.
Carlson’s shift isn’t an isolated event; it’s one sweeping the Republican Party. It’s a privileged populism. This populism was ushered in of course by Donald Trump, but it was supported by the anti-government, Tea Party politics of the 2010s. It’s one that’s a departure from one of the historically hawkiest parties in international politics. The Republican Party used to be the party of neoconservatism, of intervention everywhere and anywhere at any time. It was Eisenhower and Nixon who ceaselessly meddled in Central America, it was Reagan who propagated the Iran-Contra affair, it was Bush Sr. who got us into the Gulf War in 1990, it was Bush Jr. who invaded Iraq and Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11, starting an infamous “forever war” in the Middle East, and it is Trump who now has the world yet again on the precipice of war. Many of these interventions were uniquely harmful: they stoked red peril across the globe and created a US foreign policy objective not based in humanity, but in glory, of a nation so powerful that no other could stand up to it. Yet now, many in that very same party call for the US to sit on the global sidelines, merely to be an observer no matter how deep the tragedy.
But where does this purposefully neglectful world view come from? Where lies the north pole of Carlson’s beleaguered moral compass? It’s a synthesis of understanding and ignorance; of knowing the pain being caused by doing nothing and purposefully letting it fester. It comes from a warped understanding of government spending and the role of our national debt. It’s an ideology fine-tuned at bastions of privilege like Trinity, the very place Carlson got his degree. A take that screams: “I don’t care whether you live or die, so please God don’t get me involved and stop spending my money.” And that’s a fine take when it’s your friends drunkenly arguing at Pike on a Saturday night or when those two kids in your intro to poli sci class debate in bad faith, but it should be unacceptable when it comes to widely disseminated messaging in global conflict.
There’s a remarkable distance from reality that comes with our time at an institution like Trinity, fueling our privileged populism. For many students (but absolutely not all), our campus serves as the continuation of a bubble, one that starts at birth in the Boston and Connecticut suburbs and continues long through adulthood. This bubble effect is no breaking news, it’s an accepted reality that the school itself actively plays into with our literally gated campus intended to provide a sense of “safety and security” for Trinity’s students. The Trinity bubble tends to also guide our politics, no matter where on the political spectrum we claim to fall. It’s what allows us to believe that we matter more than the outside world, that what we do and choose not to do here is more important than what’s being done a quarter mile away in Frog Hollow or 5,000 miles away in Palestine.
But it’s not the school itself that actively teaches us disengagement, it’s our culture. The history we learn at Trinity is the same curriculum that’s taught at most every college or university. We learn varied perspectives on most global events from the Mesopotamians to technocracy, there’s nothing particularly special about it. What instead degrades our worldview is the immense concentration of wealth at our college. 26% of Trinity’s students are from the top 1% of earners, that’s the highest mark in the nation. The median family income at Trinity is $257,000, staggeringly higher than the national median of $80,000. Trinity is quite literally unmatched in terms of student wealth, shrinking our already restricted student bubble even further.
Our disengagement creates a privileged populism in foreign policy, but it digs deeper; it infects all aspects of life at Trinity. It makes in-class participation an outlier, not the norm. It shifts clubs from school-wide open opportunities to places where only the most engaged students show up. It isolates our student activists, who bravely stand up to our administration and fight for justice for those on campus and those in far away places. Our responsibility as Trinity students is not to merely untether ourselves from this privileged populism, but untether others. Have genuine conversation and debate about what’s going on in the world around us, not just what happened at AD last weekend. Open your mind up to new perspectives on global conflict. Participate in our Hartford community, not for class credit or personal esteem, but genuinely for the community. Be the “bold, independent thinkers who live transformative lives” that the wrap on the south side of the library claims that we are.
This article, while well-written, makes some rather dubious points. The writer equates a general non-intervention policy with a “purposefully neglectful world view,” as if the United States must be the policeman of the world. This is the language of neoconservatism, the belief that the US must intercede in all human affairs to promote freedom and democracy – leading to tragedies like Vietnam and Iraq. Certainly, the author rightly acknowledges the “uniquely harmful” aspects of many US interventions – but also seems to lament our relative lack of muscular intervention now.
Additionally, the author claims that current wave of what he calls “privileged populism,” typified by this anti-interventionist stance, was “ushered in of course by Donald Trump.” Then, out of the other side of his mouth, he writes, “it is Trump who now has the world yet again on the precipice of war.” Well, what is it? Is Trump non-interventionist or a warmonger? The last I checked, both the most recent horrors of the Russo-Ukrainian War (2022) and the Hamas-led militant surprise terror attack on Israel (2023) both occurred during the Biden administration. As of this writing, Trump has ushered in a peace accord between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo and has crippled Iranian nuclear sites. He’s not non-interventionist, and he has demonstrably not been a warmonger – he prefers precision strikes and limited engagement.
Finally, the author asserts that the immense concentration of wealth “degrades our worldview.” The first obvious question is: degrades from what? Political, activist interest in the outside world? It’s an interesting take, as some of the wealthiest among us (Donald Trump, Oprah Winfrey, Elon Musk, George Soros, Tucker Carlson, Reed Hastings, Tom Steyer) are also the most activist. I think Trinity, generally, is too self-critical about its own level of political engagement: Most students, at Trinity and elsewhere, are just trying to get an education and some fun memories, and aren’t frankly obligated to care. You may not like it, but that’s their freedom – the challenge is being persuasive enough to get them (or anyone) to listen.
Finally, the term “populism” is a bit confusing here. According to Merriam-Webster, the term is defined as “a political philosophy or movement that represents or is claimed to represent the interests of ordinary people especially against the Establishment.” Populism doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with intervening militarily anywhere but rather on domestic meat-and-potatoes issues, which was attractive to Americans. That’s why Donald Trump won, frankly – too many people thought the Democrats were being “purposefully neglectful” of our own borders and economy. Charity starts at home.
“He who knows only his side of the case, knows little of that.” – John Stewart Mill (1859)